Regular expressions 101

In this video tutorial, we walk through key building blocks of regular expressions using the incredibly powerful REGEXEXTRACT function in Google Sheets. To follow along, make a copy of this Sheet. Topics covered:

• Matching characters and sets of characters
• Using ORs to match multiple things
• Using escapes to match special characters
• Matching the beginning and end of strings (input text)
• Extracting substrings with capture groups
• Bonus: the handy Sheets IFERROR function

A little bit of regex knowledge can go a long way. Regular expressions are supported in all major programming languages, and they are also available as a text/field matching option in many Google products including Analytics, Data Studio, and Tag Manager. For example:

• Google Analytics
  • View filters
  • Goals – matching pages or event attributes
  • Content groupings
  • Customizing channel groupings
  • Matching dimensions in custom segments
• Data Studio
  • Filters
  • Custom fields
• Tag Manager
  • Triggers
  • Custom variables

A few resources mentioned in the video:

• Regexr – web-based regex testing tool
• RegexOne – step-by-step regular expression tutorials
• SEMrush – the source of the sample data in the Sheet, and a fabulous toolset for SEO

And here’s a post I wrote a while back about searching-and-replacing in Sheets with regular expressions.